I met Katherine Yang-Iott at the Women Philly in Tech Summit a few weekends ago. She is a high-energy scientist working at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), mom of two, and new entrepreneur. We chatted about her company for a few minutes at the Summit. The idea of pursuing a “passion project” in addition to a full time job resonated with me—I spend a lot of my downtime working on Beta Pleated Chic.

Katherine’s new company, DutchMutch, is all about ‘Split anything with anyone at anytime (anywhere).’ “When you want to split something with somebody, you know, you call your friends, coworkers, whatever. But after you run out of those people, then what do you do?” Whether it be a farm share, a case of beer, or a Netflix account, there are some things in life that are too much for one person. She sat down with me last week to talk about DutchMutch and her advice for anyone embarking on a side project they are excited about.

Q. Where did the idea for DutchMutch come from?

Katherine and her husband came up with the idea for DutchMutch two years ago. “We sort of joke about it whenever we are in a situation where we are like, ‘I wish we could DutchMutch this.’ We are the kind of people who would split anything to save money, time, or to make things more convenient.” When Katherine had her first son, she hoped to split a nanny with another family. “We tried Craigslist, we tried Care.com and it was really hard [to find anything that focused on splitting/sharing]."

“We are assuming people would split something with a complete stranger if it benefits them.”

How did DutchMutch get started?

“I’ve always wanted to do something on my own. My husband is an architect and I work as a scientist—we both really love our jobs, but at the same time, you just want something that is yours.”

When DreamIt Ventures came to CHOP, Katherine went to talk to them about different ideas she had. “I ended up making an appointment with a couple of consultants. I had a few ideas about stuff from lab, which we weren’t sure how feasible it was to do. Before I left, I was kind of joking around and started telling them about DutchMutch. They were really excited about it.”

“One of the things that surprised me is that this doesn’t already exist. When I was talking to the DreamIt Venture guys, one of them got his phone out and started looking on Google for an existing app and didn’t see any. So that either means someone tried it and it failed horribly, or no one has tried it because it’s too simple.”

The consultants kept in contact with Katherine and suggested she go home and create a fake landing page and see if she received any hits. That weekend, Katherine and her husband created the initial site. "We also talked to our third co-founder, Pete [a programmer], and together we started to piece together our ideas."

Katherine and her family

How has it been going so far?

DutchMutch went live a couple of months ago and there are currently test groups at Penn and Mt. Airy using it. “My very early adopters. So far, things that are a one-time split are probably the ones that work the best. I actually share a Netflix account with somebody else. We trade—I use his Netflix account and he uses my Amazon Prime. But, nothing is stored. We don’t store our credit card information or anything on there. It works out really nicely. I really want people to start thinking about different possibilities, [such as] sharing memberships and stuff like that.”

What is your day job?

Katherine has worked at CHOP for nine years. Her bachelor’s degree is in Biochemistry and she worked in the pharmaceutical industry for two years after college. “I really love my job, I love the program that we’re in. I get to help nurture all the PhD students. I also realized that I personally do not want to get a PhD. And for what I wanted to do, I didn’t require it. I recently joined the Office of Postdoctoral Affairs here as a Fellow. I’m doing a Research Administation Fellowship here at CHOP along with working on my own research projects in my lab."

Do you have plans to monetize DutchMutch? If so, how?

“In the beginning I thought, oh if I could just create a tool that people would use, that would be all that would matter.” But, with the help of her business partners, Katherine eventually began thinking about the business potential behind the site. Eventually DutchMutch will add a cashless transaction system, such as Venmo or PayPal and DutchMutch will sustain itself by taking a percentage of these transactions. If users still want to perform cash-based transactions, those will always be free.

In addition to the cashless transaction system, “I think that if we get enough people to list for certain services, we can contact the vendor directly.” Katherine suggested things like personal trainers or Philly’s tickets. “This is the reverse Groupon, where you have something you want to do and you are trying to get people to do it with you.”

What else is in the works at DutchMutch?

“We are going to build an app for it so that it is easier to use. And we are hoping that it will be location enabled. You would have a map with ‘Quick Split’ options. Wherever you are, a map will pop up with things you may want to split. [Items would be available] for 20 minutes or less. Let’s say you’re at the airport and interested in splitting a cab. When you drop the pin, it’s green. Then after ten minutes it becomes yellow. After 15 minutes it becomes red. And after twenty minutes it disappears.”“In my ideal world, you are walking in the mall, and you just look on your phone—buy one get one shoes [to split]. I like the idea that there is a limitless amount of things that people can share, depending on your comfort level with strangers.”

The DutchMutch Team out in Philly!

Has it been challenging to work full time and pursue this project?

“It’s been a big challenge because I have a one year-old and a three year-old. It’s a little crazy. My husband travels a lot for work—he designs zoos for a living—which is the coolest job in the world. And I work full time and have this Fellowship I just started. I do feel a little stretched at times and more stressed out than I’ve ever been, but not in a bad way. Do you have ever have that feeling where you really want to do all these things because it’s possible and you know that you can create something great?”“There are days when you really just have to pick one over the other, and of course I would always choose my family over anything. But that doesn’t mean that the next day I can’t focus on something else. I like the idea that I will just keep chugging along and keep pursuing it.”

Words of advice for someone interested in pursuing her own side project?

“It’s great. It’s really great. I would say: do it! I have no cautionary tales. Even if it all goes poorly, you never know unless you try. It’s different if you are creating a product where you have to invest a lot of money, maybe think about it more. But if you have a grand idea, I say go for it. I think too many people are afraid of uncertainty."

Katherine also acknowledged that over the years, she has learned to make the most of her time. “When I was younger, I wanted to do everything myself. Now that I’m older, I realized I have the option of just paying someone to do something for me. It is awesome. Life changing. And it’s worth it, totally worth it. Time is precious.”